Faustian bargain down the line

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Deterioration in the city's train service has become a bleeding
sore for the State Government, with commuters held to ransom by
poor management and archaic work practices. Goodwill has long
evaporated. The rail union is threatening to strike after the HSC
exams, although the Premier, Bob Carr, has nipped that in the bud
by referring the dispute to the Industrial Relations
Commission.

Train drivers argue they are tired of being blamed for the
network's woes. They have a point, but only if their archaic work
practices are ignored. Pushing up discontent is the sabotaging of
schedules by drivers calling in sick, continuing technical
glitches, unsettling timetable changes and emasculation of weekend
services. The result is a political crisis for the Carr Government
at least as damaging as any in its nearly 10 years in office.

The drivers cannot avoid their share of blame. They have held to
outdated work practices ranging from their insistence that they
spend little more than half their work hours actually driving
trains, through to the 19 months it takes to train the drivers. The
former finally is being increased, but the latter, demanding more
fundamental and far-reaching reform, needs to be tackled.

At a time when pay rises for many workers barely keep up with
inflation, the Government is offering an increase of 19 per cent
for train drivers over three years, on top of the $400 a month they
won in February for working three overtime shifts a month, and the
$5000 bonus for working overtime. Fixing the rail mess will not be
found in throwing more money at drivers who are not underpaid, at
least when compared with others working in essential services. It
is equally clear the Government does not know how to improve
service levels. Its failures have simply pushed train travellers
elsewhere.

Over recent decades the work practices of coalminers, pilots and
wharfies have been overhauled, involving protracted industrial
upheaval. In each case, there was competent management to work
through the necessary changes. With the railways, this is unclear.
The lack of depth was highlighted, for example, with the return of
Ron Christie, the man who designed much of the present network, to
sort it out.

The railways have gone backwards during the long stint in office
of the Carr Government. Yet in many ways the rail system is the
lifeblood of the city, and a vital asset as urban density builds
and as gridlock grips more of the road system. To fulfil its
potential, the culture within the railways - from management to
intransigent unions - needs drastic change. Without it, we are
doomed to repeated Faustian bargains that keep an ailing rail
network barely operational, instead of undertaking the long overdue
hard decisions to get it right, for once and for all.

Past state governments have been thrown out as a result of
fumbled train timetable changes. It is a sobering thought and one
that clearly has this Government very worried. Its challenge is to
put that energy into building a durable solution.

Two readings better than one

The way primary schoolchildren are being taught to read has
re-emerged as a political issue with the federal Education
Minister, Brendan Nelson, asserting that it is a federal, not a
state, matter. Two decades after Australian schools largely adopted
the so-called whole language approach to teaching, proponents of
the older method - phonics - have convinced the Government that the
old ways are best. Dr Nelson has announced a national inquiry into
literacy in primary schools. The inquiry follows warnings last
April from 26 academics that the recent popularity of the whole
language teaching approach to reading was ineffective for some
children.

Dr Nelson said the inquiry membership and its terms of reference
would be announced within a fortnight. He said the teaching of
reading in Australia was not world class and cited Australian
Council for Educational Research findings that about 30 per cent of
year 9 students failed to reach a level of literacy considered
necessary to function in adult society. Against this, international
literacy assessments show that 15-year-olds in NSW score above the
average for OECD countries.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, lamented in 1997 that "faddish
approaches to education" were contributing to poor literacy. But
falling literacy standards are not a modern affliction and have
invariably been blamed on the popular teaching method of the time.
The phonics method prevailed in English-speaking countries until it
was overthrown in the mid-19th century by reformers who believed
children should be taught to recognise whole words without sounding
them out. Phonics made a return to fashion in the 1950s before
falling to the whole language philosophy during the 1970s.

Too often, the education debate has been contaminated by
self-interest or by ideology posing as evidence. In the present
controversy, a large share of the NSW academics who wrote to Dr
Nelson came from Macquarie University, which just happens to offer
a speciality in the teaching of phonics; further, Brian Cambourne,
an associate professor at Wollongong University's education
faculty, has accused phonics supporters of drumming up a
non-existent crisis to panic parents into putting children into
private schools. Others claim the failure to train teachers to
teach reading on a range of research-based principles may be the
problem.

Certainly, educators vigorously debated the two systems in the
1980s and '90s, most coming to the assessment that both had merits
and, therefore, a combination of the two worked best. Hopefully, Dr
Nelson's inquiry will concur.